Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
KIERAN
Don’t you dare hold back, Little Conduit.
Through the still-thickening haze of liquor and lust, I felt strangely weightless—untethered, like the only damn thing that kept me anchored to reality was Arken Asher’s gloriously soft and deceptively strong thighs bracketing my own against the bed.
I licked my lazy lips with a languid smile as she flung the little scrap of lace across the room—freeing those beautiful, perfect tits that I wanted to watch bounce while she rode my cock.
To that end, Arken frowned as she glanced down where she was straddling me.
Though my underclothes had already fallen by the wayside when she took hold of my cock with such delicious aggression, she had forgotten to take hers off before positioning herself oh-so-prettily on top of me.
My right hand caught her by the knee before she tried to climb off me to rectify the situation. No thank you. Even covered by cloth, the warmth of her cunt felt way too good on me right now. She was staying right fucking here.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said, nodding toward my left hand where Shadows were coalescing in my open palm, forming a familiar aetherblade.
Arken raised a brow. “So you’re too drunk to choke me, but not too drunk to play with knives? Make that make sense, Vistarii.”
“In my defense, I’ve been training with these blades since I was nine years old,” I chuckled. “I’ve got over a decade’s worth of muscle memory to work with here. I think we’re safe. But I can put it away if you really want me to…”
As I spoke the words, I traced the very tip of the arcane weapon from her solar plexus down, down, down her body, over her ribcage, savoring the way she shivered when the sharp point traced a line above her belly.
I wasn’t breaking skin. I was barely even touching her flesh with the blade, but she watched every fluid motion with quickening breaths, entranced by the act.
“Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head violently. “Keep going.”
Something dark and damned within me wanted to howl at that, to bellow and bray with animalistic pride as I watched her watch me, watched the way my blade could seduce her just as easily as my hands, my mouth, my cock.
Not everyone gets aroused by sharp objects, I thought darkly, remembering her quip on the floor of my training room. But my gods, you sure fuckin’ do.
When the blade met her still-covered cunt, she moaned.
That’s my girl. Keep going. Keep showing me that dirty little dark side.
With a few quick and precise cuts, the black lace barrier between us fell away in tatters.
“Well, now you’re just wasting your own Lyra,” Arken teased.
I let my blade dispel before my drunken fantasies drove me any further past the edge of impulse. “Quite frankly, I can’t think of a finer way to spend my salary,” I replied with a wink. “Now…Where were we?”
Arken bit her lip, hesitating again. Gods, still. She was holding herself back for reasons my gin-soaked logic struggled to comprehend, as if she doubted the freedom I’d offered—as though she doubted just how badly I wanted to give her anything she ever fucking wanted from me.
“Go ahead, pretty girl. You can keep going. You can get even rougher with me if you like.”
Please, I wanted to beg. Show me those teeth again. Bite down. Break skin. Do whatever you fucking want, just show me there’s more than just Light running through those veins.
The intensity of this urge was inexplicable, but undeniable. For whatever reason, I fucking needed this from her. I needed her to let go.
“I don’t…Kier, I’ve never…” Arken trailed off, glancing away and biting her lip. Still so stuck in her own head.
“Does the impulse exist?” I asked.
“Not like—I don’t—I’m not a domme, you know?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, the low rumble feeling pleasant in my chest. “Oh, trust me, I know. I know exactly what you are. But that’s not what I meant…And I think you know that.”
I already knew the answer. Yes, she wanted to get rough with me.
Yes, she had been holding herself back. Yes, she wanted to draw my dominance out with her own aggressive little claws.
This was an exercise in getting Arken to admit it to herself, so that she might finally give in to her darker instincts and let go.
I decided to keep myself occupied by playing with her clit while she deliberated over her answer.
“Fuck,” she hissed, grinding against my hand.
Finally, the blend of liquor and lust loosened Arken’s tongue just enough to break past her anxieties. Even though the words came out nervous, they were honest, lacking in any attempt to conceal her truth.
“Okay, yes, Kieran, fine—the impulse exists. I want to get rough with you. I just…I like being the one roughed up. To be the one taken, you know? And I’d never really given any thought to wanting anything in return, to even ask for more than I’m given, let alone take it in this context.
I’d never felt the urge. It didn’t even exist until… ”
Her poor lower lip was going to start bleeding any minute now, assaulted by her hesitation once again.
“Fucking please finish that sentence, Arken. You’re killing me.”
“Until I met you,” she confessed. “And now, ever since we—I just want…Fuck, I want so many things—I want it all, so bad that it fucking hurts.”
There she is.
“Explore them. Explore it all. I’m giving you permission to try whatever you like, to take whatever you want from me—and I promise you, I wasn’t lying. There’s nothing you can do wrong. Not a damn thing you could do to me tonight that wouldn’t get me off.”
“I don’t know if I believe that. I don’t know if I can.”
“What are you so afraid of, Little Conduit?” I asked softly, reaching to stroke my thumb against that furrowed brow, attempting to smooth it myself.
“I’m afraid to…I don’t know, cross a line? Push your boundaries, make you uncomfortable. This is all so new to me, this…need. I don’t want to hurt you, Kieran.”
I smirked, but I wasn’t entirely teasing when I asked the next question. “Are you sure about that?”
I knew Arken was a masochist, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a sadistic streak somewhere hidden in there, too. We were so very similar, after all.
I knew my relationship with pain was different than Arken’s.
Mine was akin to close combat—sharp and defiant but also comfortable and familiar.
I didn’t take pleasure from pain, but it was a language I was well-versed in.
It sharpened my senses—awakened my urge to fight, to survive. Pain reminded me I was alive.
Arken’s relationship with pain was different.
I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.
Somehow, I knew that for her, pain was a thing of beauty, not battle.
To Arken, experiencing pain was more like a dance—a courtship.
It was clear in the way she luxuriated in it, embraced it—always taking her time to welcome every mark I left across her skin.
Always admiring them later in the mirror, as if they were both works of art and memories she wanted to savor.
I wanted to believe this juxtaposition alone was evidence of our compatibility—that I wasn’t just punch-drunk on a sudden influx of affection and intimacy that I had denied myself for so, so long.
But as was well-established, I was a selfish, greedy bastard—and even more so now that I was drunk. I needed more than just that evidence. I needed to know Arken wasn’t just capable of receiving what prowled around my dark side…I needed her to show me what manner of beast lurked within hers.
Arken remained silent, so I continued.
“Because I want to hurt you, pretty girl. And not just because I know you like it like that.”
Come on, Ark. Don’t tell me you don’t feel it…That same urge to take, to claim, to mark—
“And I also know godsdamn well that you did this,”—I took one finger and trailed it down my neck where she’d bitten and sucked at the skin until it bruised so intensely that no one could mistake it for anything but what it was—“on purpose. That was you taking, and you liked it. You liked staking your fucking claim.”
A pained look flashed in her eyes, and though she left the words unsaid, they were written all over her face.
But you aren’t mine to claim.
I whispered my response all the same. “Aren’t I, though?”
It must’ve been what she needed to hear, because what happened next was a blur.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Her pupils blew out, black and beckoning, eyes gone wide and wild.
Her cheeks flushed, the corners of her mouth upturned as she crashed into me—mouth against mine, fingers lacing through my hair, the pillowy softness of her full breasts crushed against my chest as she took little notice of my comfort, though I was plenty comfortable with this.
I groaned as she used her grip on my hair to yank my head to the side, eliciting surprisingly sharp tingles against my scalp as she lowered her mouth, returning to her handiwork from earlier. With one slow, lascivious lick, her tongue teased at the skin.
And then she bit down, hard.
I gasped, eyes shooting open with legitimate surprise as she took the sinuous skin between her teeth, her quick little inhales sounding more like a serpentine hiss than the desperate breaths they were.
I wasn’t a masochist, no—but for a moment, I sure as fuck felt like one.
As she bit me harder than she ever had, I found myself savoring the ache.
“There we go. That’s my fuckin’ girl,” I growled in approval, tipping up my chin, giving her more room to work.
Arken may have had her reasons to keep her neck clean in the name of professionalism, but I was going to be shameless about this.
I would waltz right into headquarters with her brutality on full display.
I wanted Sophrosyne to know—I wanted the whole damn world to know that I had been possessed by this woman, body and soul.